CAREER: Closing the Loop on Walking: From Hybrid Systems to Bipedal Robots to Prosthetic Devices and Back

该学院早期职业发展（Career）基金通过拟人化动机研究双足机器人的动态行走，为混合系统基础的贡献提供资金，特别关注混合系统的独特行为和假肢设计的应用。两足行走是复杂动态稳定行为的典型例子。混合系统——具有连续和离散行为的系统——提供了一种建模范式，可以捕捉高度复杂系统的行为，从而产生在连续和离散系统中没有发现的新现象。双足行走机器人自然地被建模为混合系统，这两个领域的融合——双足行走和混合系统——为进一步理解这两个领域提供了一个独特的机会。本项目通过对人类行走的研究，获得精确的、拟人化的双足机器人混合模型，设计控制规律，通过使用几何约简来产生类人行走，正式研究由此产生的混合系统的稳定性和鲁棒性，并利用对双足行走的累积理解来设计假肢装置。该项目的应用具有深远的意义，为混合系统提供了新的研究方向，并对行走的基本机制有了新的认识。将这一认识应用到假肢装置的设计中，可能会对数百万下肢截肢者的生活质量产生巨大影响。此外，双足运动的拟人化性质对所有年龄和人口统计学的人都有广泛的吸引力，极大地促进了推广和教育。

This Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) grant provides funding for contributions to the foundations of hybrid systems through the anthropomorphically motivated study of dynamic walking of bipedal robots, with a special focus on behavior unique to hybrid systems and applications to prosthesis design. Bipedal walking is a quintessential example of complex dynamically stable behavior. Hybrid systems---systems with both continuous and discrete behavior---provide a modeling paradigm in which to capture the behavior of highly complex systems, resulting in new phenomena not found in continuous and discrete systems. Bipedal walking robots are naturally modeled as hybrid systems, and it is the confluence of these two areas---bipedal walking and hybrid systems---that affords a unique opportunity to further the understanding of each of these areas. This project uses studies of human walking to obtain accurate and anthropomorphic hybrid models of bipedal robots, designs control laws that yield human-like walking through the use of geometric reduction, formally studies the stability and robustness of the resulting hybrid systems, and uses this cumulative understanding of bipedal walking to design prosthesis devices. The applications of the ideas underlying this project are far reaching, providing new research directions in hybrid systems and a new understanding of the fundamental mechanisms underlying walking. Applying this understanding to the design of prosthesis devices could have a dramatic impact on the quality of life of the millions of lower body extremity amputees. Furthermore, the anthropomorphic nature of bipedal locomotion has wide appeal to people of all ages and demographics, greatly facilitating outreach and education.